


Protective

by Sholio



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Multi, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 11:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13212585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Steve is getting hassled at school; Nancy and Jonathan decide to do something about it.





	Protective

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt on Tumblr: _Billy tries to start shit with Steve (at school?) but unwillingly incurs the wrath of Jonathan and Nancy (eventual/hinted OT3?)_

It catches Jonathan off guard, the surge of anger he feels the first time he sees Billy Hargrove knock Steve down on the basketball court.

He's no more interested in sports than he ever has been, so he can't really explain to himself why, in these winter days of 1984/85, he sometimes finds himself wandering into the gym to watch the team practice. He doesn't go to the actual games, though Nancy sometimes does; a holdover, she guiltily admits, from the year she was dating Steve, when she used to try to attend all Steve's games, and ended up getting sucked into actually caring about whether the Hawkins team wins or loses.

Jonathan doesn't care in the slightest about the team's win-loss record. He just wants to ... he's not sure, honestly. Watching their more polished performance in their games still doesn't interest him, but the behind-the-scenes of team practice is intriguing -- the interplay between the players, the messiness, the rough camaraderie. It's like peeking into a different world, a world he's never been part of. 

Steve's world.

But now he's a little bit part of that world, because he and Nancy eat lunch with Steve almost every day. It's not precisely that Steve doesn't have other friends; he still seems to be popular with a lot of his teammates and classmates, even if his old gang has been snubbing him so pointedly that even Jonathan can't help noticing. But Jonathan suspects the reason why he rarely sees Steve doing more than having occasional casual conversations in the hallway with his fellow jocks is the same reason why he seldom sees Nancy hanging around with her old girlfriends. They don't understand. No one does. The population of Hawkins High is still caught up in their stupid high school world, their world of cliques and popularity and hairstyles. They weren't _there._

( _Shared trauma,_ whispers a voice at the back of his head.)

Jonathan is still not entirely sure how he feels about Steve, but there's no denying the white-hot rage that flushes through his body, tingling down to his fingertips, when Billy body-checks Steve to the floor, and trips him a couple of plays later.

Jonathan hadn't realized it was still going on, let alone how bad it is. He starts to notice, now, how often Steve goes out of his way to avoid some of his other teammates in the hallways or cafeteria; starts to notice things like Steve bending his locker door back into shape one morning, or parking his car near the teachers' cars, where it's less likely to be messed with.

"Yeah," Nancy says, "there was a little of that last year too, after he stopped hanging around with Tommy H and Carol and that crowd, but I think it's gotten a lot worse since he lost that fight with Billy last fall."

Her expression is distant, frowning across the cars in the parking lot at the brick side of the school. They're sitting on the hood of Jonathan's car, Nancy skipping English (she's already pulling an A), Jonathan skipping Chemistry (same). Last year, he thinks, Nancy wouldn't have dreamed of skipping a single class; it's hard to even imagine.

People change.

Like Steve Harrington did.

"It bothers you," Nancy says suddenly, looking directly at Jonathan.

He drops his eyes, fiddling with the camera in his hands. "I guess. I mean, I know what it feels like." And what he can't quite articulate is how unfair it feels for this to be happening to Steve _now,_ when he really doesn't deserve it -- instead of last year, when Jonathan would've given his favorite camera lens to watch Steve get taken down a few notches. "Doesn't it bother you?" he asks her.

"Yeah, it bothers me." Her gaze goes back to the school. "You know, we could do something about it."

"Spoken like someone who hasn't been bullied," Jonathan murmurs. Nancy gives him a sharp look. He shrugs and looks down at the camera again. "Once those guys get fixated on you, there's not much you can do about it."

"There is one thing you can do," Nancy says, and when Jonathan looks up again, there's steel in her eyes. "You can scare them."

 

***

 

It's after a late practice, the rest of the team gone, the halls of the school empty and echoing, when Billy comes out of the locker room to find them waiting for him. Nancy has the nailbat dangling from her hand.

Billy stops at the sight of them; his gaze goes to the bat first, to the two of them as an afterthought. Jonathan can see him rearrange his face into its usual expression of lazy amusement, with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and has to force himself not to take a step backward. It's like being stared at by a jungle cat.

"Well, well," Billy says, lighting a cigarette. "Revenge of the nerds." He slowly blows a cloud of smoke in their direction, dragging his eyes up and down Nancy in a way that makes Jonathan's hands curl into fists. "Afraid I haven't got time to sign autographs tonight, ladies. Got a hot date lined up, so if you'll excuse me ...."

Nancy swings the bat around slowly without raising it, describing a gentle circle with its tip, just above the cracked school linoleum. "This won't take long. We're here to tell you to leave our friends alone."

"Friends." Billy smiles. "You mean Harrington, right? So he's got girls fighting his battles for him now?"

Nancy gives her head a quick shake, flipping her ponytail. "This isn't about any stupid testosterone competition. Steve doesn't know we're here. He never will. But you're going to leave him alone and make sure your friends leave him alone too."

Billy's smile turns into a savage grin, smoke curling out of his mouth. "Is that right. Little girl says so. Guess I don't really have a choice then, huh?"

"No. You don't." Nancy hands the bat to Jonathan, who takes it, surprised. And then he feels his eyes go round as saucers as she takes his dad's revolver, the one they've kept all these months, out from under her jacket. 

This wasn't part of the plan. He had no idea she had that with her.

Billy goes very still. 

Jonathan tries not to notice -- it's more evident when Billy isn't sneering at them -- how tired Billy looks, and the colors of a bruise fading on the side of his jaw. Jonathan's already guessed where Billy gets it from, guessed it from the way Max acts about her parents whenever she's hanging out with Will's bunch and the topic comes up.

But, tonight, it doesn't matter. Jonathan's dad is a shitbag and _he_ doesn't take it out on other kids in the hallways of the school. By nature or nurture, the only thing Billy seems to understand, the only thing that makes him back down, is violence. 

"You expect me to believe you're going to shoot me?" Billy asks softly. He laughs, but there's something strained in it. "You're going to shoot me in a school hallway?" He takes a step forward -- Jonathan tenses -- but then, something in Nancy's steady, cold gaze, something in the way she's holding the gun rock-solid and pointed at his center mass, makes him stop.

Those are the eyes of someone who's faced down monsters and defeated them. She's really not afraid of Billy. Not even slightly. And just as Billy knows Steve _is_ scared of him, knows it and responds to it, Jonathan can see him responding on some animalistic level to Nancy's calm lack of fear.

"I don't care if you believe me," Nancy says quietly. "I know where you live. I know where you sleep. And you're going to leave my friend alone. Do you understand?"

There's a moment -- a long moment -- when Jonathan can't breathe, because everything hinges on what Billy does next, how far he's going to push it. Jonathan doesn't really think Nancy would shoot him. Not like this, point blank, the gun aimed at the center of his body like he's a Demogorgon she has to put down. If Billy does call their bluff, Jonathan doesn't know what she'll do. His hand is sweat-slick on the grip of the bat.

But Nancy's face is perfectly calm. She doesn't look angry; she just looks businesslike, a slight crease between her brows.

"Do you understand?" she says again.

Billy takes a breath, and Jonathan can actually see it: the moment the danger passes, the moment when something folds up in Billy, like one dog backing down before a more aggressive one. "Yes," he says, staring at her, lips stiff with the cigarette dangling out one side.

"You'd better get to your date," Nancy says quietly, and she steps to one side, making space for him to pass between them.

Jonathan can't quite believe she's doing this, letting Billy get close enough to grab the gun. Billy is bigger and stronger than either of them. But, as Billy strides between them without a word, close enough for Jonathan to choke on cigarettes and cologne, he gets that it's all part of the bluff. Near or far, she's not afraid of him and she wants him to know that. Or at least to think that.

And then Billy is striding off down the corridor, trailing smoke, and Nancy is putting away the gun with a hand that trembles.

"Jesus," Jonathan says.

Nancy nods and takes a deep breath. She glances around. "Is there ... can we ... I need to sit down."

They sit on the side steps of the school for a little while, Nancy with her elbows on her knees, Jonathan with the bat behind him (kind of tucked into the shadows, in case a teacher shows up). He's already decided that he's not going to ask her if she intended to pull the trigger if Billy actually attacked her.

Instead he says at last, hesitantly, "Do you, uh ... do you usually carry the ...?" As if afraid that imaginary, unseen teacher might hear, he gestures at her jacket, where he now knows the gun is tucked into an inside pocket.

"It's in my book bag most of the time."

And he'd though Steve keeping the nailbat in the trunk was paranoid. Jonathan wonders briefly if it's something wrong in him, or in them -- that he doesn't think that way. He has his camera on him, always, but he never even thinks of carrying a weapon. Not even after the Demogorgon and Will and all of it.

Maybe that's why he feels he's lucky that there are people like Nancy and Steve around.

And if he can't imagine doing something like what Nancy did tonight, he can't imagine Steve doing it either; that's part of Steve's problem, Jonathan thinks -- why Steve's had so much trouble with the popular kids since they turned on him, because Steve can be scary as hell when he's fighting a Demogorgon, but he can't fight _people_ to, literally, save his life. 

So that's why he and Steve are both lucky to have Nancy around.

Speaking of Steve ... there are footsteps approaching, and then Steve sits heavily down on the steps beside them in the gathering dusk. There's a moment of silence that's companionable, comfortable even, in which nobody asks what anybody else is doing there. 

Then Steve says, raising his eyebrows, "Do I want to know why you've got my bat?"

"It's not your bat," Jonathan says. "I made it in the first place."

Nancy has been sitting hunched over, with her hands tucked under arms, as if she's cold; now she straightens up. "Technically," she says, "it's Mike's bat. In the last year and a half he hasn't noticed it's missing, though, so you two can go on fighting over it if you want."

"You're better with it anyway," Jonathan says, and he picks it up and hands it to Steve, grip first.

Steve takes it back with a puzzled expression. "New monsters?" There's a slight edge to his voice.

"No new monsters," Jonathan says. "We just needed the bat for a little while."

Steve doesn't ask any more questions, and Jonathan wonders how much he actually did guess of what they're up to. It's getting chilly on the steps; there's warmth in the sun now, as the year slides towards spring, but it still gets cold after the sun goes down. 

And it still feels, sometimes, like there are things in the dark.

"You want to come over tonight?" Jonathan asks suddenly. Steve and Nancy both look at him.

"Come over?" Steve says, like he's never heard of such a thing.

"Yeah, to hang out. You know." Jonathan can't remember if he's actually ever invited anyone over to his house to hang out in his entire teenagehood -- except Nancy, who is his girlfriend now so it doesn't quite count. He's not even quite sure what hanging out entails. They don't really have anything at his house to _do,_ and he can't remember now if his mom is working a late shift tonight or not, so he isn't sure if they're going to have the house to themselves or not.

But Steve is smiling now, a hesitant smile that makes him look much more approachable and less like King Steve, and Nancy is giving Jonathan a soft look that makes his stomach flip over. 

Steve stands up and reaches out a hand, helping first Jonathan up, then Nancy. The bat dangles loosely from his other hand, like he's gotten so used to carrying it around that he hardly even notices it's there.

"Yeah," Steve says. "Let's do that."


End file.
